Jonathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox at Mozilla, explained to TrustedReviews that the company has never been able to bring its browser to the OS due to Apple’s restrictions being too much of a hindrance on its technology

“You don’t see us on iOS right now because every time we look at that platform we say we can’t bring meaningful choice. The rules of the iOS store say we’re not allowed to bring our technology,” Jonathan Nightingale, Mozilla’s Vice President of Firefox said.

Mozilla’s only real attempt at gaining traction on iOS came in the form of the Firefox Home app that was launched back in July 2010, which gave users access to various elements of the Firefox desktop browser. This allowed Firefox users to access browser history, bookmarks and settings but was eventually canned in September 2012.

Despite never releasing a specific browser app for iOS, Firefox has enjoyed success with its Android app and the company explained that it would continue to support this despite the fact its Firefox OS continues to become more and more popular.

“For us, we look at the entire spectrum of where does the internet exist, where can we bring our values and meaningful user choice to people – that’s where you see us,” Nightingale said. “Firefox for Android really reaches users who are in markets that have high power devices and what they want is the Firefox they know and love.”

When it comes to iOS, though, Firefox doesn’t look like changing its mind until Apple treats third-party browsers like first class citizens and Mozilla will instead focus on its Firefox OS.

“I’m confident I could get the Firefox icon into an iOS device but I think that’s about where it would end. It would be somebody else’s rendering engine, somebody else’s Java script,” Nightingale added.